Intervision: The Russian proposed song contest with China, Central Asia

We knew Russians were a big fan of Eurovision, that cheesy but extremely popular songfest that pits various European and Eurasian nations against each other in a country-by-country sing off, but we didn’t realize how much. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is now urging China to join a song competition of its own – this time between Russia, them and other Central Asian nations.The proposal, dropped at the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting in Beijing, would have Chinese and the rest (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and the like) hold a song competition called “Intervision.” According to Putin, “conducting an international modern song contest, Intervision, would strengthen cultural ties between our nations.”

We think Putin’s just hoping Russia will get another chance to recapture the glory they felt when they won Eurovision 2008 (their first win in the contest ever). Eurovision’s notorious for being only partially related to talent – most of the time, it’s more about who won last year and whether you can get your specific regional clique (Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Western) to back you up with votes. Since Russia’s prize is pretty recent, they probably won’t get another chance to shine for a while (the country to win back-to-back… or even more than once in a decade, was Ireland in 1996).But if that’s the case, maybe Russia’s a little blind to China’s competitive spirit? We guarantee that if an Intervision does ever get set up, we’ll soon be inundated with stories of Chinese singing training camps and underage crooners and Zhang Yimo productions and maybe even another performer/voice switcheroo.Ooooh, actually that sounds a lot more fun than Eurovision. Bring it on!As a bonus, to the right is the song that won Eurovision 2008 – Russia’s Dima Bilan singing “Believe.”